May 10, 2017

America's Cup @Bermuda: Oracle capsizes (II), No Injuries or damage

Source: Oracle Team USA - No injuries gladly, but seems Oracle is having control issues. Relying on a control panel could bring some surprises for the LV & Finals. Remember current hard Ls foils are similar in concept (not in size and devel of course) of those used by Oracle in their rapid R&D for San Francisco to catch up with the Kiwis flying their AC72. Those Ls were anything but stable. In contrast Team New Zealand developed from scratch their Js /L-Vs and set the standard on flight and specially on how to control it.

So how this new huge Ls are controlled if they don´t feature an intrinsic design control asset as TNZ Js? Well, with the famous push button foiling control panel.
The trade-off on losing a foil with some degree of height altitude like the TNZ Js, is achieving more speed but you rely strongly on pushing the right buttons and quick enough.

Think on a beachcat. Fitting any flying cat with a TNZ J and you've seen how well the fly : FP/F20. You can also have a great degree of auto control or height altitude trim with A-Cat/N17 MKII / Essentiel Z foils.

Now try to fit any of these platforms above with hard Ls foils, and you'll have no way to control your flight. Some months ago I received a proto render for a production foiling beahcat , it features L shape mainfoils, told them to go Z cause those Ls were gong to be dangerous to handle flights as you need constant trim as done in the AC50s.

AC50s (L foils) are faster than AC72 (TNZ Js) but the new A50 weapons will need to finish in one piece to establish themselves as an evolution.